Wedding Day
The first piece of information to reach me from the outside world today was an NPR interview with the operator of a fight club, which came on with my alarm at 8:30am.
The second was an email from some damn wedding site I'd registered with ages ago, back when Stan Was the Plan, congratulating me on the joyous occasion. Because today was supposed to be our wedding day, according to initial plans.
We later changed the date to September in order to better fit my teaching schedule, and still later, of course, Stan bailed out on me. But apparently, I never bothered to either update or delete my account with the site I'd used to start building a wedding homepage. Probably, before I'd forgotten about it altogether, I didn't think I could deal well with deleting the page and figured I had enough to deal with as it was. Hence the email. I guess this little congratulatory message would have been rather gauche, had it not been sent by a computer. As it was, it was just absurd.
My inital reaction was simply the mild annoyance of getting an unwanted email and having to delete it. My second was guilt and a little fear: Wasn't I supposed to feel awful and burst into tears? Had I become not just a tough broad, but also a heartless one?
And then I was just really glad that I had let my too-expensive and rather autocratic stylist have his way with my hair yesterday (it's now so dark it's nearly black, has layers, and is considerably shorter), bought a too-expensive outfit at a too-hipster store on Thursday and, without even thinking about what today was supposed to mean, had made Saturday morning coffee-date plans with one of my e-suitors on Tuesday.
Because, no. I don't want to feel bad. And I don't need to feel bad, either. I'm tired of feeling bad about things that aren't my fault. I did the best I could for Stan (and my best was, by the way, pretty damn good). I sacrificed an awful lot for him, and he screwed it up. So I deserve to feel good and to take care of myself and, dammit, yes--I even deserve to flirt a little with an interesting guy in a cafe.
Which I did. And it was nice. It was also a little confusing and a little weird and a little awkward, but hell, it was essentially a blind date, so it had to be all those things. And it was mostly nice.
Sometimes, the right lip gloss, shamelessly applied, can feel a lot like power.
The second was an email from some damn wedding site I'd registered with ages ago, back when Stan Was the Plan, congratulating me on the joyous occasion. Because today was supposed to be our wedding day, according to initial plans.
We later changed the date to September in order to better fit my teaching schedule, and still later, of course, Stan bailed out on me. But apparently, I never bothered to either update or delete my account with the site I'd used to start building a wedding homepage. Probably, before I'd forgotten about it altogether, I didn't think I could deal well with deleting the page and figured I had enough to deal with as it was. Hence the email. I guess this little congratulatory message would have been rather gauche, had it not been sent by a computer. As it was, it was just absurd.
My inital reaction was simply the mild annoyance of getting an unwanted email and having to delete it. My second was guilt and a little fear: Wasn't I supposed to feel awful and burst into tears? Had I become not just a tough broad, but also a heartless one?
And then I was just really glad that I had let my too-expensive and rather autocratic stylist have his way with my hair yesterday (it's now so dark it's nearly black, has layers, and is considerably shorter), bought a too-expensive outfit at a too-hipster store on Thursday and, without even thinking about what today was supposed to mean, had made Saturday morning coffee-date plans with one of my e-suitors on Tuesday.
Because, no. I don't want to feel bad. And I don't need to feel bad, either. I'm tired of feeling bad about things that aren't my fault. I did the best I could for Stan (and my best was, by the way, pretty damn good). I sacrificed an awful lot for him, and he screwed it up. So I deserve to feel good and to take care of myself and, dammit, yes--I even deserve to flirt a little with an interesting guy in a cafe.
Which I did. And it was nice. It was also a little confusing and a little weird and a little awkward, but hell, it was essentially a blind date, so it had to be all those things. And it was mostly nice.
Sometimes, the right lip gloss, shamelessly applied, can feel a lot like power.
posted by Ancrene Wiseass | 2:29 PM
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